Internet as Media Force Multiplier

One of the fav terms in mil-speak these days is a force multiplier. Roughly speaking, something that adds a dramatic strength to your military combat effectiveness. If your side has an air force and the other side doesn't, it makes it really easy to pick off the tanks and roll through to the objective.

Thinking about the internet and scouting out areas for discussion at the upcoming SEC meetings, it occurs to me that the real impact of this second generation of internet is to act as the media's greatest force multiplier. A lot of times we think in terms of what the media knows and how it comes to know it. Great focus has gone toward finding websites (Deadspin or BadJocks, for example) or SNW tools (Facebook or MySpace). This is a mistake.

Two fronts here. First, not unlike the internet itself, there's no way you can keep a handle on every corner of the web. You'll always miss something, some new site, some updated tool -- it's a losing battle.

The second front is more significant. Time is a commodity for the media -- always has been, always will be. The fixed points are the most obvious. The looming line for some media, something that becomes more artificial as the days pass and the media morphs. The for information that is fresh to fill the 24/7/365 void of news-tainment. How can media people solve those problems in the days in which budgets are dropping, staff is falling, costs are rising but the demand for more -- and different -- information grows?

Google. Message boards. Bloggers.

More and more sports stories include quotes from people that were considered "off-limits" in the past. Recent examples? The sudden departure of the Georgia women's golf coach -- no quotes in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from official University sources, nothing from the coach, nothing from the players. But AJC did have quote from a player's father. At LSU, in the days immediately after the Chatman resignation we saw quotes from her coffee shop owner, friends and family. In Arkansas' own men's basketball coach departure-hire-departure-hire, one player mother became a fav quote.

How did they find them? Google up their names, addresses and phone numbers in five minutes, something that would have required hours or days in the past and perhaps considerable cost. How did they know where to look? A run through the message boards, which despite everyone's attempt at pooh-poohing away are as full gold nuggets as Sutter's stream. Sit on-line and sift the silt from the ore. Want to get the flavor of the event? Find the blogger who's already done some of your background work.

Are any of these things new? Not no, but hell no. It just took lots and lots of time and usually the event passed without the ability to dig in. Find the parent? Had to hope you already had the name and hometown, and the local library had the phone book. Get the ors? Took a lot of folks in a lot of donut shops and barber's chairs.

Given a new road map courtesy of the net, the reporter can now try to sort out the true and false by peppering the source with items that might start the process closer to the target than the wide-open and vague, so what happened?

I run through this to bring out a couple of points. Don't believe you can control the message completely. There will always be a counter, or someone off the campus. You can navigate and try to maintain a message, but be ready for the rough spots. The other is both simple and sinister: you better know the truth and rely on it. Sometimes knowing what really happened isn't possible, particularly to the spokesperson. This is dangerous for all parties, but a reality because the individuals involved for their own agendas will not be forthcoming.

There is the possibility -- not very viable, but possible -- that Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Minister of Information did not know that the U.S. troops were at the Baghdad airport. His own people just might have been not forthcoming with the intelligence. More likely is the sad SOB was sent out to try and mislead. As Dr. Phil would say, how did that work out for you, Muhammed?